Since Kate Millett's Sexual Politics Lawrence has been associated with another manifestation of ideology – the patriarchal sort that waged explicit counter-revolution against the feminism of his day. This association has so deeply affected the estimate of Lawrence prevalent today, it is important to recall the kind of reading it is based on. Millett, for instance, comments in this way on the passage in Women in Love in which the male cat cuffs the female:

It will be plain by now that such a reading of the scene depends on some questionable assumptions: that meanings in Women in Love are simple and transparent (‘in case we missed it’); that Birkin is simply Lawrence's mouthpiece (‘brings home the moral’); that Ursula, despite her own feminist consciousness, is there simply to revolve ‘quietly at his side’.